12 Friday Sep 2025
Here’s another of this year’s new bug finds, a handsome little mirid bug coloured a rich brown and orange, Megacoelum infusum. I found it on a local Oak tree, which was fortunate, as there’s a very similar looking bug (Megacoelum beckeri) that lives on Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). The British Bugs website entry for this species says it is both vegetarian and carnivorous, supping on Oak sap and tiny insects.
10 Tuesday Jun 2025
Tags
British miridae, British plant bugs, bugs on Oak, insects on Oak trees, Miridae, oak tree, plant bug on Oak, Rhabdomiris striatellus
Here’s another bug that I’d never seen before this year and I’ve been lucky enough to find both a nymph and an adult. This is Rhabdomiris striatellus, one of the UK’s 200-plus species of plant bugs in the Miridae family. (I’ve probably only seen about a tenth of them so I’ve got plenty more discoveries yet to make.)
As this bug’s larvae feed on unripe catkins, it is usually found on or around Oak trees, and that’s certainly where I found the adult bug, shown below. The nymph above had probably fallen out of an Oak tree, or had decided to go walkabout to find a neighbouring Oak; I found it on the railings of my local park, where I’ve found so many invertebrates.
Rhabdomiris striatellus overwinters as an egg, hatches out in mid Spring, then passes through a series of instars until it reaches adulthood. The adults can then be seen from May through to July. Those timings certainly fit with my discoveries; I found the nymph on 25 April and the adult, in a different location, on 3 May.
12 Monday May 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British plant bugs, bugs on Oak, Cyllecoris histrionius, Cyllecoris histrionius adult, Cyllecoris histrionius nymph, Miridae, plant bugs
It’s not often that I manage to find both adult bugs and their nymphs at the same time but, during Saturday’s meander around local fields, I got lucky. These are Cyllecoris histrionius, members of the Miridae family, and they spend their lives on Oak trees. I’ve seen the adult bugs before, just not the young’uns.
There are a few plant bugs whose adults have markings quite similar to this one so care must be taken when identifying them, but it’s not too difficult. They are both carnivores and vegetarians, feeding on insects smaller than they are, like bark flies and aphids, as well as on parts of their host tree.
After laying their eggs, the adults die; they’re usually only seen from May through to July. In the Spring, the eggs hatch, and go through several stages (instars) before reaching adulthood. The gorgeous blue-green nymphs shown above are all final instars.
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